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Over the ten days of placement, I met with a 5-year-old child over zoom around 3 times a week, for an hour each time. He was very outgoing, very affectionate, and he loved hands on and active activities. We spent a lot of time doing outdoor and indoor activities which engaged his interests. He struggled with child led experiences, so I worked on implementing activities which allowed him to use his creativity to lead the experience, while still receiving some instruction from me. He demonstrated great growth in his learning and development over the two weeks and became very comfortable with me.

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How does social interaction support children’s learning in conflict resolution, problem solving skills, and investigation?

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Observation 1:
Seb and Mathilde play together with some cups, shovels, and sand. Seb stays by the sand shovelling it from the box to a cup. Mathilde says to Seb, “I want some more” Seb replies, “Do you want some more? Ok I will give you some bigger bits. Do you want it big?” Mathilde nods and Seb reaches for a large scoop of sand with his shovel and pours it into Mathilde’s cup. Seb fills Mathilde’s cup to the top with sand and looks at Mathilde and says, “would that be enough?” Seb says “let’s put the sand in this. Do it like this” and demonstrates how he wants Mathilde to do it. Mathilde joins Seb in filling the container until Seb says, “I think that should be enough.” The children then pretend the container of sand is a birthday cake and place it in a carboard box to cook. Mathilde gives Seb another smaller container to put in the box to cook but Seb says, “There’s no sand in there, let’s fill that up.” The children work together to fill up the box and then take it over to the pretend oven and Seb says “let’s put this one in for two minutes.  Be careful it is hot.”

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Observation 2:
Children engage in water play with an educator. The educator asks, “what do you want me to do with this water David?” David replies, “put it in there.” The educator says “ok I will put it in there. Oh my, it is getting heavy now. Do you think it is too heavy to carry?” David laughs as the water barrel he is holding gets heavier as the educator pours water in. He says, “it’s too heavy now!” and drops it into the bigger barrel. The container makes a splash as David drops it into the barrel and he says, “it made a big splash!” George says, I want to try to make an even bigger splash, I need to fill mine up with even more water!” David says, “I will help you.” David gets a smaller cup and uses it to get water from the barrel to pour into George’s container. David says, “it will get heavier now when I pour more water in.” George says, “and then it will make a very big splash!” The educator asks the children, “why is the container getting so heavy?” David says, “because there is so much water and water is so very heavy.” George says, “and that’s why it will make a big splash because it is so big!” David pours the last cup of water into George’s container and says, “it is ready now George, drop it in!” George drops his container in, and it makes a splash. “That was a really big one” says George.

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Observation 3:
Four boys use LEGO to make a city. The boys have built houses, schools, and bridges to get across from one space to another. An educator joins them and asks, “is that a house?” Jerry responds, “yes this one is a house.” The educator asks a follow up question, “does everyone here have houses?” James responds, “yes everyone gets a house” and Jerry adds, “and these are massive decorations for all the houses.” Tom says, “no that’s not a decoration, that’s a slide, that one is a decoration.” Jerry says, “oh yes that is a slide.” The educator asks the boys, “do you have parks at your house as well?” Jerry responds, “yes and we have rockets to fly into space!” Jerry and Steve move over to the side and play with boats and rockets they have made from LEGO. The boys use their arms to take them from the ground up into the sky and run with them to pretend they are flying. Jerry jumps with the rocket and says, “I just jumped a million higher than I can, look how high I can jump! Way higher than I can on earth.” The children remain tuned into each other’s ideas and continue to build up a story around their city and build upon it. The children add ideas about what each building is, and how it is used in their city. The children use little characters as themselves, and decide who lives in which house, and what their roles are in their city.

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The children in these observations are engaging in social interaction in different settings and demonstrating their ability to learn from one another. In each of these ordinary moments the children are building upon the knowledge of one another to construct and direct their learning. The children collaborate with one another to explore, investigate, and imagine through the support of each other rather than an educator.

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While observing these ordinary moments, what was most prominent to me was the children’s ability to learn through social interaction. In each of these ordinary moments, there is little to no support from an educator. Instead, children support one another in their learning and discovering. In the first observation, two children discuss the amounts of sand needed to achieve an outcome. They create a narrative together of the sand being food and use communication and interaction to understand one another’s creative ideas. In the second observation, the children work out that the more water in the container, the bigger the splash will be. In this ordinary moment an educator is present, however she is not providing answers to the children, rather offering prompts, and asking open-ended questions. The children problem-solve and hypothesize together to reach an agreement. In the last observation children interact and collaborate to create ideas and make decisions for their play. The children bounce ideas off one another and use one another as support to achieve outcomes.

Social cultural theories and the Victorian Early Years Learning and Development Framework (VEYLDF) value relationships and participation as central to learning and recognize the importance of encouraging children to work collaboratively enabling them to share ideas and skills (Nolan & Raban 2015). The idea of children learning through social interaction with one another is mentioned in Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development. This theory suggests that children offer new knowledge to previous knowledge through interaction and communication with one another and the world around them. He states further that educators must be attentive to the communication and interaction children have, to gain the knowledge that is needed to take an active role in their learning process (Nolan & Raban 2015). This idea is strongly supported in the VEYLDF outcome 4, “children are confident and involved learners” stating that educators promote this learning when they encourage children to engage in both individual and collaborative explorative learning processes allowing the child to feel free to investigate, imagine, and explore ideas (Victoria State Government 2019).

The children in these ordinary moments play different roles in their learning. Some children act as more knowledgeable others, an idea proposed by social cultural theorist, Lev Vygotsky, which refers to someone who has a better understanding or higher ability than someone else. These children provide support through communicating ideas, propositions, and support to their peers. Lev Vygotsky proposed that young children are curious and actively involved in their own learning and discovery. He placed great emphasis on what social contributions have to offer in this discovery (Mcleod 2019) similarly to how the children in these observations are learning. Providing children with the opportunity to share their ideas to support one another is emphasized strongly in the VEYDLF. It states that part of an educator’s role is to encourage children to make their ideas and theories visible to others which helps children to understand the importance of collaboration with one another and the idea that each individual has something important to offer (Victoria State Government 2019). These ideas are supported in Jerome Bruner’s theory of social interaction as well stating that it plays a fundamental role in children’s learning and development. He suggests that when children learn through interacting, gradually, children will be able to share a common focus and work closely to achieve outcomes and goals (Nolan & Raban 2015).

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In the ordinary moments I observed I was able to capture a strong connection between children’s learning and development through social interaction with one another. All three observations demonstrate children providing and taking on support from one another to build upon and expand their ideas and imagination. The connections I have gathered are supported by theorists and the VEYLDF which highlight the importance of providing children with a space to collaborate and learn from one another. I have created a plan of how I might promote learning through social interaction based on the observations, theory, and the question posed for myself.

1. Take on a child-led and directed approach to teaching.

There is evidence to suggest that social skills improve drastically through child-led learning. As children make decisions about the activities they participate it, they are also making decisions about who is involved in their play. To encourage social interaction with children, I will ensure to implement child directed learning into my practice by providing children with a number of resources and learning experiences to choose from. I will ensure to provide learning experiences which build upon skills in working together and encourage children to work closely with others to achieve an outcome. Providing children with the freedom to choose the direction of their learning will help them develop a confidence to engage in challenging activities which will encourage children to provide and receive help from their peers when needed.

2. Introduce activities which engage the child’s interests to provoke collaboration and communication between them.

While interacting with a child virtually as well as observing groups of children, I was able to observe that children communicate with one another the most when something sparks their interest. Children build their knowledge around this interest and use it to investigate ideas and come up with theories. Based on this observation, as an early childhood teacher moving forward, I will plan based on the child’s interests by observing the children in my room with the intent of learning more about their interests. I will then plan learning experiences based around these interests to provide children with the chance to interact and build upon one another’s knowledge to learn from experiences.

3. Implement and encourage dramatic play

Through observing groups of children, I was able to discover how much communication is expressed through dramatic play. Dramatic play teaches and promotes expressible language. Through this type of play, children are provided with the chance to communicate their ideas and desires with one another. Dramatic play can also be a means of supporting conflict resolution between children as it gives them the opportunity to create and imagine their own scenarios and solve problems on their own. To do this, I will provide children with opportunities to take part in unstructured dramatic play, allowing them to choose who/what they want to be, and take part in discussion based around their narratives. I will encourage relationships between children by asking open ended questions about what roles they are playing and what they have imagined resources to be. Implementing dramatic play will provide a feeling of freedom to children and support them in learning to collaborate with one another.

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McLeod, S 2019, The Zone of Proximal Development and Scaffolding, Simply Psychology, viewed 11 September 2021, <https://www.simplypsychology.org/Zone-of-ProximalDevelopment.html>.

Nolan, A & Raban, B 2015, Theories into Practice: understanding and rethinking our work with young children and the EYLF, Teaching Solutions, Blairgowrie, Victoria, pp 90-92.

Victoria State Government 2019, Victorian Early Years Learning and Development Framework, Victoria State Government, viewed 11 September, <https://www.education.vic.gov.au/Documents/childhood/providers/edcare/veyldframework.pdf>.